Finally Paunch said, “That’s insane! The war medicine is their heart! Lose it, and it will be like driving a burning stake through their bodies. They’ll be terrified that Power has turned against them! This could be the moment we’ve waited for!”
It would take but a single runner, someone who could pass into White Arrow Town and spill the whole thing like a stew at Screaming Falcon’s feet. An excitement like he’d never known began to burn in Amber Bead’s breast, the fish forgotten in his mouth.
“Yes, Grandfather,” Whippoorwill cooed. “Do this. Watch our people Dance with fire. You will see Chikosi become Chahta, and the scalps of our people will be buried in a sack in the forest. A Councilor will die, and a new leader will rise in his place.”
“What do you mean?” Pauch turned worriedly to his granddaughter.
Her eyes, however, had fixed Amber Bead in their bottomless stare.
A Councilor will die? “Then, the Chikosi will blame me?”
“Fear not, Mikko, you shall die an old man. But you balance on a thin rope. Below you, monsters snap in the boiling brown water. Choose this path, and freedom might come for our people. Oh, yes. But at what price?”
“What are you talking about?” Paunch demanded, clearly unsettled.
Amber Bead stared into the girl’s eyes, like looking into an endless void. He felt himself falling, and reached out to brace himself, letting the plate of fish fall from his lap, where it spilled on the floor. An unbidden image of ruined villages, scattered corpses, and broken houses formed. He could see dogs, foxes, and crows feeding on the half-rotten bodies.
“Gods,” he whispered. He blinked, breaking her spell, and then rubbed his eyes. “What was that?”
“Life after the fall of the Chikosi.” Her voice sounded distant and muddled, as if he’d heard it through a hollow log.
“I don’t understand.”
Her eyes seemed to swell again. “Until my sister arrives, the fate of our people lies in your hands, Mikko. How do you choose?”
Someone turned the earth upside down. The air had to move somewhere else to make room,” Two Petals declared as she stared up at the great mound jutting into the sky atop the Cahokia bluff. The slanting sides of earth rose to a dizzying height, the building high atop the great mound looking small, the palisade like fuzz along the mound’s lip. “Did you bring me here to see all those ghosts?”
“No. I brought you to see a woman.” Old White reached down into the canoe, pulling his wooden pack from inside the hull. He struggled with the weight, happy to have Two Petals help him slip his arms through the straps and settle it onto his back. A cold wind blew dark clouds out of the northwest and sent ripples of murky water to pat the sandy canoe landing. No less than twenty canoes had been pulled up on the beach, two of them belonging to Traders who had called greetings as they stowed loads prior to pushing off.
Old White patted his belt pouch, sure that it was snug at his waist. He looked at the trail zigzagging up the steep bluff. His aching bones didn’t relish the climb. Trees had started on the slope, a circumstance that once would have been intolerable. The sand here was black, filled with the ash of a thousand long-gone campfires. Broken pieces of fire-cracked rock, bits of pottery, and other trash were scattered about. The place reeked of old urine and feces.
“So this is the great Cahokia?” Two Petals asked.
“What’s left of it.” Old White reached for his staff and started forward, the white feathers fluttering in the gusty wind. He shivered as the cold ate through his hunting shirt. “It’s almost time for buffalo robes.”
“Too warm,” Two Petals replied, her eyes fixed on the stupendous mound rising above the bluff. Atop it, a wooden palisade barely masked the great building that rose three stories into the sky. “Could men really build such a thing? Did they Dance as they raised Mother Earth to Father Sky? It would have taken wings, beating in the sunlight. They would have blackened the sky, slipped sideways in the wind. Can you hear their voices, shish, shish, shish? Over and over.”
“I would have liked to have seen it when the lords of Cahokia were at their greatest,” Old White told her. He gestured with his staff. “The palace was once five stories tall. And the palisade, that was plastered with painted clay that caught the sunlight and shone like polished shell. Once this place ruled most of the world.”
She walked beside him, head cocked, listening to something he couldn’t hear. “Because of that, you became great. That has to be worth something.”
Old White shot her a sidelong glance. “Who are you talking to?”